A role in Bridgerton gave Nicola Coughlan a profile. Now she’s using it for good

There are many milestones in the career of actor and activist Nicola Coughlan you could call transformational. Landing the role of Joyce Emily Hammond in a 2018 London stage production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, or the role of Clare Devlin in the sitcom Derry Girls the same year.

Then, just two years later, came her star turn as Penelope Featherington in the critically acclaimed Netflix period drama Bridgerton. The hit series has been a key stepping stone on the path that has taken Coughlan, 36, from Galway, Ireland, to London and finally to Hollywood.

Nicola Coughlan’s journey to Bridgerton was not especially rapid and stardom is something she is still getting used to.Credit: Zoe McConnell/AUGUST

But there is one smaller role that cuts deep for her: guest judge on the campy TV favourite RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, in which the contestants, including Scarlett Harlett, Vanity Milan and Krystal Versace, were required to turn camping equipment into haute couture.

Standing shoulder-pad to shoulder-pad with drag queens and dealing with a complicated mix of genders and pronouns taught Coughlan an important lesson about womanhood.

“About the power and expression of femininity and how much it’s always so undervalued,” Coughlan tells Sunday Life. “Like [being told] you shouldn’t be girly, you shouldn’t do this, this is too feminine, this is that. [Drag Race is about] taking that back in your hands, finding the power and the joy in it.”

Coughlan found Drag Race at a time “when I was struggling in so many different ways and didn’t know what I was doing, and it gave me strength as a woman,” she says. “I could see femininity and womanhood placed on a pedestal and sort of parodied and taken to a heightened level, but it made me go, wow, isn’t it incredible?”

Coughlan was born and raised on the outskirts of Galway. She is speaking to Sunday Life in London while shooting a TV advertising campaign for Uber Eats. This has put her in the hair and make-up seat, looking at her reflection in the mirror. Who is staring back at her, I ask? The little girl who could not, once upon a time, figure out how to make it all work, she replies.

“There’s something really funny about hearing the name you had in primary school being listed as the name of a person who’s famous.”

NICOLA COUGHLAN

“I get that thing of the inner child [when I look in the mirror] and I feel like I can see the 12-year-old girl who was in primary school in Ireland,” Coughlan says. “It’s a really weird thing. RuPaul once said he wished he’d chosen a stage name, and I totally get that, because there’s something really funny about hearing the name you had in primary school being listed as the name of a person who’s famous.”

Though the journey to Bridgerton and this year’s blockbuster cinema hit Barbie was not especially rapid – there were many guest roles on television and small parts in theatre along the way – stardom is something Coughlan is still getting used to.

“It’s so silly to me,” she says of fame, “because I was with a designer the other day and he was saying, for this collection we’re dressing Beyoncé, Cardi B and you, and I was like, that’s so funny to me. I thought, you don’t know who I am – I’m literally the girl who works at the local shop.”

Nicola Coughlan on the set of the Uber Eats campaign.

Fame, she says, is a strange land to inhabit. “It makes you more aware of yourself,” she says. “It doesn’t exacerbate anything that’s not already there. So [when people say] fame made them a monster, I’m like, they were a monster underneath to begin with.

“It has made me more aware how much of an introvert I am. I said that to my sister, who I am very close to, and she said, well, you were always an introvert. And I was like, was I?

“Actors are weird in that you feel comfortable putting on a show but then one-on-one you can be really shy. It’s an odd combination.”

Peel open the story of Coughlan’s life and a thread begins to form along the seam where actor and activist meet. During the London run of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she penned an essay for The Guardian about the treatment of women’s bodies in the media. Responding to one critic, she wrote: “He was meant to review my work. Instead he reviewed my body. That is not acceptable.”

Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton, with co-stars Bessie Carter as Prudence Featherington and Harriet Cains as Phillipa Featherington.Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Coughlan’s line in the sand may come to be remembered alongside another memorable encounter: when Helen Mirren, asked by interviewer Michael Parkinson in 1975 whether her figure undermined her credibility as a serious actress, replied: “Serious actresses can’t have big bosoms, is that what you mean?”

From taking such a stance, Coughlan says, she “learnt a hard lesson in that people will take what they want from it and not. I’d love to think I could just go and talk about my work. It’s very depressing and reductive. I think in some ways we’ve gotten better, but in some ways I think it’s the same old prejudices wrapped up in a different, more palatable boat.”

Then, in 2019, Coughlan and her Derry Girls co-star Siobhán McSweeney led a march over London’s Westminster Bridge, supporting the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland.

Asked why, she says: “I went from being someone who didn’t have a lot of money and didn’t have any profile to having some. And once I was aware of that privilege, I thought I had to give back in some way.”

No surprise, then, that Coughlan has signed up for a new Uber Eats campaign, a cheeky piece in which she uses the delivery app to dial up some period romance and is instead sent a Mr Darcy-like gentleman whose Regency-era attitudes (and personal hygiene) quickly propel him towards a worn-out welcome.

But the campaign has a more political message – addressing period poverty. That is, the lack of access to adequate menstrual health management experienced by many women worldwide. For every period product purchased via an app, another will be donated through the charity Share the Dignity to groups like the women’s advocacy group Wesnet.

Coughlan worked with a UK charity involved in addressing period poverty several years ago, so when the call came, the issue resonated. “It feels like such a basic human need – and it’s a basic human need for half the population. So when you don’t have access to it, it’s insane.

“I feel fairly confident saying if it was something that men needed that there would be no problem, they’d be free absolutely,” she adds.“It would be so easy just to do [a campaign like this] and let it be fun and frivolous, but it’s great to be doing something that actually is going to make a difference to people.”

Tackling the topic of what have become extraordinary career milestones for Coughlan – playing Diplomat Barbie in the Barbie movie, which has taken well over $2 billion at box offices worldwide and is still climbing, and a third instalment of Bridgerton due before year’s end – is a little complicated. Because of the strike in the US by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, both topics are essentially off limits.

“We have made definite strides around mental health. But when you get into the day-to-day things, like a friend not being there for you, that gets uncomfortable.”

NICOLA COUGHLAN

But we do know that Bridgerton’s third season is expected to debut before the year’s end and that it will feature, alongside Coughlan, new faces including Hannah New as Lady Tilley Arnold, “a firebrand widow” (according to the show’s marketing material), Sam Phillips as Lord Debling, “a genial lord with unusual interests”, and James Phoon as “the handsome, yet dim-witted Harry Dankworth”.

Coughlan, meanwhile, has also signed on for a new series, Big Mood, written by Camilla Whitehill, about two friends and “very complicated mental illness, in particular bipolar disorder,” Coughlan says. “Camilla is an incredible writer, I’ve known that for years and she deserves the moment she’s about to get with this show.”

In particular, Coughlan says, she hopes that Big Mood will open a conversation about psychological wellbeing. “We have made definite strides around mental health,” Coughlan says. “But when you get into the day-to-day uncomfortable things, like a friend not being there for you, or dealing with them being on antipsychotic drugs, that gets very uncomfortable [for people].”

The greatest reward of her career, Coughlan says, is working with female storytellers such as Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee and Bridgerton creator Shonda Rhimes. “There is a truth in their expression of their experience and their unwavering commitment to presenting women as completely rounded human beings, and not as the smart one or the stupid one.

“The women [McGee and Rhimes create] have all of these attributes and they have no problem with doing that,” Coughlan adds. “People would say to Lisa, can you make her a little softer? Or to Shonda, does she have to do this? And their answer is, that’s what women do because that’s what people do. I think audiences feel the realness in [those shows] and want to connect to it.”

And the little girl in the mirror? “I think despite all of the self-doubt, she still had some weird, steely determination that it was going to happen for her,” Coughlan says. “That’s what’s at odds with that imposter syndrome. There’s something else in there that goes, you’re going to do it, just stick to your guns. As the Irish say, what’s for you won’t pass you.”

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